Saudi Arabia stands for positive change

So what has changed in Saudi Arabia? This is a question I am often asked by visiting journalists on the rapidly moving landscape of Saudi Arabia. And with the passage of time, I find my answers adapting to a more voluminous response.So, what has changed, you may wonder.A lot, I say — and for the better. Ever since Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman revealed his Vision 2030 to the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia has not looked back.Internally, the Kingdom leapfrogged over decades of fundamental stagnation and moral dilemmas that wrapped every aspect of the day-to-day living of the people. From the...

The Statue of Unity to valorise Sardar Patel — India’s first deputy prime minister, the ‘Iron Man’ who unified India — brings to mind two contrasting poems. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ and Emma Lazarus’s ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’.The Statue of Unity, is four times as tall as the Statue of Liberty, but the Lady in the harbour is symbolically the taller structure for it speaks to our better nature. Tribal leader Chotu Vasava asks: “I am not...

As the world’s second-largest religion with more than 1.8 billion followers, Islam has spread to all corners of the globe. However, it has come under recurring attacks, more so since the events surrounding the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States. The religion of peace was wilfully maligned by those non-Muslims who had very little understanding of the true meaning of this Abrahamic faith, and soon the word ‘Islamophobia’ crept into our dictionaries — a term conveying a negative perception and suspicion of anything Islamic.But while non-Muslims can be excused for their ignorance, what excuse do we...

It has been a rough few weeks for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Millions spent on western public relations firms failed to stave the outpouring of sharp and biting accusations against the kingdom, following the death of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist living in the United States and writing for the Washington Post. He was in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, formalising some paperwork for his upcoming marriage to a Turkish national when he disappeared.Indeed, Saudi Arabia was not spared seconds or even given an opportunity to state its case before knives were being sharpened and vitriol spent by western...

One has to be indebted to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, for revealing the sinister Israeli policy of occupying Palestinian land, particularly in the West Bank. At the UN Security Council last week, B’Tselem Executive Director Hagai El Ad presented an expose that showed how successive Israeli governments, especially Benjamin Netanyahu’s, have been redrawing the historic map of the Palestinian occupied territories. The most significant and dangerous point of this policy is dealing with occupation as a local rather than a world matter. In a nutshell, B’Tselem accused the Israeli government of turning...

On October 2 this year, a Saudi journalist walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and never came out. His Turkish fiancee who was waiting outside for him alerted authorities a little while later.Almost immediately Saudi Arabia was the subject of fiery condemnation by pundits of the western press. They were immediately joined by political figures in the United States and Europe. Charges of assassination were flowing by the minute in the wee hours of the disappearance. These allegations were picked up by much of the world’s press who reported them in their local media.Before any facts emerged, the frenzied...

On October 2 of this year, a Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and never came out. His Turkish fiance who was waiting outside for him alerted authorities a little while later.Almost immediately Saudi Arabia was the subject of fiery condemnation by pundits of the western press. They were immediately joined by political figures in the United States and Europe. Charges of assassination were flowing by the minute in the wee hours of the disappearance. These allegations were picked up by much of the world’s press who reported them in their local media.Before any facts...